The 10th anniversary of the Legacy Group of Fort Worth in Fort Worth, TX

In California, the doctor out of the house. Good evening. My name is Paul, and I'm the adult husband of a grateful member of Al Anon. And I'm also a a mild alcoholic. That was a marvelous introduction, a little short, but Everybody disappeared.

I, this is, tremendous. Just tremendous. I, we were saying last night that I, I was saying that I love AA functions where there are too many people for the size of the room. Alcoholics jammed into a room set off an energy that, drives, fire marshals crazy, but but I love it. And I always have a feeling of, discomfort for the people that have to stand, and then I realize what the hell I've got to stand.

There are seats. You can sit on the steps if you want to come up here, but of course you too, if you want to come up to the front of the room. It's hard to get out if you don't like the talk when you're sitting up. I'm thoroughly convinced that, being an alcoholic in Texas and in Fort Worth and in the legacy group, it must be extremely easy to stay sober. Geez.

I can't, can't imagine anybody having any problems in amidst all this love and energy. It's just terrific. It's been a wonderful weekend for us. I just, just loved it. And, matter of fact, talking about the crowd and the group, I saw the mail last night, and, it seems to me that alcoholics are like honeybees.

I read someplace that, if you see a honeybee, there's no such thing as a honeybee. If you see a honeybee, you know there has to be a hive of bees nearby. The bee bees take other bees to live with. They have to live in a hive together because certain ones do certain things that they can't all do at all, and the honeybee can't live by itself. It has to live as part of a hive, and I think it's pretty much that way with alcoholics.

We need other honeybees. It reminds me of, when, old years ago, many years ago, many, many years ago, Max decided to buy a lot up in an orange grove. I thought it was one of the dumbest suggestions ever. It turned out that that's where we built our house, and we lived there for 21 years. But at the time, we it was just, an orange grove, and it was, we went out to see it.

And for some unknown reason, we took a fella, Ernie Fredder, was his name. Ernie went with us, and Ernie was a salesman, the kind of salesman who likes to tell jokes. He's always talking, always telling jokes, and he went with us. I don't know why, and he kept in there. There was a row of eucalyptus trees and a lot of crows, a lot of crows there in this orchard in this eucalyptus tree, and we were standing there trying to figure out if it was a corner lot, where would it be if the streets were there, which weren't there, and we're trying to figure this out.

And Ernie is trying to talk to us about these goddamn crows. I really didn't wanna know anything about crows. I wanted to know where my lock was, this stupid lock that my dumb wife had decided to buy. I had my own problems and didn't wanna know about crows, and he was real fascinated crows are so smart. He was telling me how smart crows are.

He says crows are crows can talk to each other. He said, they really can talk to each other. And I didn't pay much attention to him. And he says, well, you do know that crows if you take crows from one part of the country and you mix them with crows from another part of the country, they can't understand each other. They have their own provincial language.

And he's and I still didn't give a darn about his dumb crow. And I was still trying to figure out what the law was. And he says, he said, did you know that crows won't fly across an open field? If there's a flock of crows flying along, and they come to an open field, stop, and they'll send 1 crow out. And if that crow gets shot down, they'll know there's a hunter there.

And I started to laugh and I said, well hell, no wonder crows are so smart. All the dummies get shot down. I guess the moral of the story is if you're flying along and you notice to the right and left you're all by yourself and you look down and see an open field, you better fly to the nearest phone booth and call your sponsor. You may be about to get chopped down and be a dumb crow instead of an old crow. Anyhow, Anyhow, I'm sure an old crow dumb crow is here.

Anyway, I'm glad to be here. We've had a wonderful weekend. It's been just terrific. I really enjoyed this so much. And, the number of people have asked me how long I'm sober, how old I am, how does the story get in the book, and I don't talk about it, the story in the book, but Ted mentioned it before.

I guess the reason is I feel embarrassed in the sense that, I I don't know. I just guess I feel embarrassed, but I'm not embarrassed talking about to you to you. It's as though and my feeling one part of the embarrassment comes from the fact that I have nothing to do with it. I thought that putting my story in the book was just about as brilliant an idea as me coming to AA in the first place. Well, it really wasn't funny.

I came to AA by mistake. It was not meant to be here, but in the same way with the story, it's only a matter of a month or well, maybe a couple or 3 months by now that I was looking through a file of correspondence that I had with the grapevine because I had sent 8 or 10 articles into the grapevine over the 1st few years, and, in writing back about one of them, the one called no pills to alcoholics, there was an article on why an alcoholic shouldn't take pills or what pills they could or couldn't take, and they wrote back and the editor of the Grapevine asked me if by chance I had had a dual problem, meaning I had a problem with both chemicals as well as alcohol and would I be interested in writing my story up or something. Well, I thought that was such a dumb idea that I didn't even answer the letter. And, some months later, she called from New York and asked me if I'd ever written my story up. And I said, of course not.

And she said, would I, mind, would I be willing to write it up and submit it to the committee with review stories for possible inclusion in the next edition of the book? And I said, of course not. And she said, would she like Carm to do it? And then I realized, or I was educated to the fact that a lot of people don't realize it, that this is the 3rd edition of the book, and in each edition, the first 164 pages do not change. Our program stays the same, but in the second and then in the third edition, they took some stories out and put some other stories in, and I have no idea how they decide what ones they're going to put in or what ones they're going to take out.

But, she asked if I'd send it in. They gave me a deadline to do it. I said, I didn't think I have time to do it. And she said, well, do your best. Try to get it in.

I let the deadline pass and thought that'd be the end of it. And she called again and wanted to know where it was. I said, I hadn't written it. And she said, I'll extend the deadline. And a girl named Julie that worked for me, in the office along with Max, she is a medical transcriptionist, a professional typist.

She thought it would be great to have typed the story, which ended up in the book, and she says, if you write the story, I'll type it. We'll send it in, and I wrote it, and she typed it, and we sent it in, and they wrote back and said, we couldn't wait for it. We had to have another printing and, so they had another printing instead of a new edition. And I thought that's fine. That'll be the end of that.

She said, no. We'll put it in the, grapevine. So they put it in the grapevine exactly as it was written except that they took out one word, which I thought was one of the best words in the they took out the word Al Anonism. That's what Stacy was talking about this afternoon. She said she didn't like the idea of people calling spouses of alcoholics, Al Anon, if indeed they don't go to Al Anon and don't go to meetings and don't do the Al Anon steps and work the program.

And the reason for that is, AC, she didn't say it, but you know, we alcoholics have a very strange disease that even the medical profession, most of them don't understand. It's a very strange disease, but it's called alcoholism, and the Al Anon, their disease is so strange that nobody's even thought of a name for it. And so I was gonna call it Al Anonism, and they took it out of the story, and but I love Al Anon. I, I go regularly. As a matter of fact, I think, every alcoholic ought to have an Al Anon, At least 1, you know.

They needed somebody to help them take their inventory and things like that. You shouldn't laugh, Yale Nuns. You should never laugh, Yale Nuns. Our book says our book speaks very kindly of them. It says they're not at fault.

They seem to have been born that way. Don't laugh don't laugh at Elanon. There is there is one fault with them though. I don't think they appreciate. I really don't think the Al Anon's appreciate how hard we worked to make them what they are.

They need to be reminded of it. I tell Max every so often, by the way, if it wasn't me, you wouldn't even be an Alamo. Alanoma. She stands up real straight and says if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't even need Eleanor. And anyhow, they took that word out and, when they put it in the grapevine, and in the grapevine they put it under the title that I sent it in under, bronze moccasins.

And even on the front of the grapevine, they had a cartoon of a pair of moccasins, and then later on when they did put out the 3rd edition of the book, they changed the title to what it is today, Doctor. Adithopoiet, and as far as my guess is, I don't know any of this all. I'm just guessing at why this all happened because they didn't even let me know they were going to put out a new edition and put the story in. In fact, the central office called up and said to Max, does doctor know his story is in the new 3rd edition of the book? And she said, no, we didn't know that.

Well, I, I already had a book. You want to buy another one and they had 2 books for God's sake. But in the grapevine, you send an article in the grapevine, they'll send you an advanced copy. A month ahead of time, you get a free copy of the grapevine. You don't have to go and buy another one.

Anyway, and they changed the title. That's the only thing I can figure out, that they wanted one that it could be a professional and have both alcohol and chemical addiction, and being addict doesn't make you not an alcoholic. On the other hand, I don't think if you're not an alcoholic, having some other problem doesn't make you an alcoholic. And I think that was the point they were trying to make, and that's how I think got in there. And that was, so the people had asked me, did I know Bill Dubya and all those, no, I don't go back quite that far.

I go back that far with Max. Max was talking this afternoon too. It's a good thing not all of you were there to hear that. Grossly exaggerated. I forget what I was talking about.

Was anybody listening? Did anybody know where I was? I didn't know. The, having talked about that, I really am lost. Did you get your free copy?

I didn't get my free copy. That's right. I had to go out and buy another book and, I did that with the grapevine, but that doesn't help. I'm sorry. Let me try something else.

But the point about me being sent to AA, and you're laughing about that, that really wasn't funny at all because I wasn't an alcoholic. I was, through a series of mistakes and misunderstandings, I was, accidentally a, patient, on the knot ward in the hospital. I was on the staff. I had a brain tumor. I had a brain tumor.

There's nothing nothing funny about a brain tumor. It was there by mistake and, they missed it completely. And and not only did they miss it, but they had a weird idea on the network that they they tried to convince me that the quality of my life would improve if I learned how to make leather belts. I didn't see how my life would be improved in any way for me to know how to make leather belts, and I didn't understand the instructions, and I have no idea why. I could tell though when this psychiatrist psychiatrist asked me about going to AA.

What he did, he asked would I would, would I like to talk to a man from AA? I remember I was sitting there thinking of all the problems and mistakes and misunderstandings and all the goofy things that had happened in my life, and I deteriorated to that point where I was there in that hospital, and he walked up to me and said, would I be willing to talk to a man from AA? And I thought, god almighty. Don't I have enough problems of my own without trying to help them drunk from my own? Didn't even like alcoholics for God's sake.

I didn't really but I could tell by the look on his face. I could just tell I felt kind of guilty that I could read him that well. I could just tell by the look on his face that he'd be happy if I said yes. And I don't know if you've been know it, but I'm sure none of you have ever been on the network. But if you ever are, you'll find that happiness on the network is having a happy psychiatrist.

It's nice to have a happy psychiatrist. I, went off to one of these AA meetings and, got he really got interested in me. Really got they And I thought, oh my god. I've got me an alcoholic psychiatrist. He's sending me to meetings because he's ashamed to go.

I wondered how many meetings I'd have to go to before I'd get him sober. You know, it's a funny thing. It's a part of the, power of this program. I'm I'm always impressed with the power of this program. It turned out.

I found out later that he's not, an alcoholic. A psychiatrist is not an alcoholic. He's still in practice there in Santa Ana, California. And he, but when he was in an internship, when you're to do a a month in each psychiatry, obstetrics, medicine, surgery, dermatology, and so on. The month that he went through psychiatry, he had to go to 2 AA meetings, open AA meetings just to see what AA was like to round out his training in psychiatry.

He was so impressed. He was so impressed with what he saw at those 2 AA meetings that now, many years later, that's his favorite deal as a psychiatrist. He to run around with his butterfly net and capture alcoholics. And he send them off to AA. And he won't even treat them until they're sober a couple of years.

Then they're still flaky enough, then he may treat them, but he he won't try to do for them what he thinks AA can do better. And, he's and then the thing I was trying to say was, 1 year, a few years back, I was at an IDAA meeting, International Doctors in AA, an organization for doctors that are sober in AA. There was a panel we were on I was on a panel with 4 other doctors, and of the 4 of us, 3 3 of us doctors had been captured by this one psychiatrist, and had been, and had been sentenced to AA, and the 4th one of us had been captured by 1 of the 3 of us. And all 4 of us at that time were working full time in the field of alcoholism chemical dependency. So just think over the years, how many alcoholics the ripple effect of how many alcoholics have been helped by that 1, 2 AA meetings, that 1 non alcoholic psychiatrist went through.

That's some other that really impresses me. And, and, a different kind of story of that type, though the power of this program, in our home group, we, on Wednesday night, we're going to be in the area, get down there. Somebody said to me last night, where are you from? I said, He looked at me kind of blank. I said, it's near the beach.

He looked at me kind of blank. I said, this is on the coast from Mission Viejo. He looked at me kind of blank. It says it's about halfway between San Diego and he says, oh, California. Anyhow, if you ever get out to California, Southern California, near the coast, Laguna Beach, give us a call.

My Wednesday night home group, we give cakes, birthday cakes every Wednesday night. Not too many months ago, a young woman got up to get her case, and she said that our meeting, the Laguna Beach speakers meeting of AA is held in the Laguna Beach Women's Club, which is just up the hill, a short block, a little longer than that, but still short. A short block from Albertsons Market. She said 15 years ago, that night, she had been down in Albertsons supermarket, had bought a half pint of booze, and when she went to pay for it, she asked if she could use the women's restroom, and in the restroom, she cracked the bottle and had her drink, and as she left the supermarket, she started walking up the short block past the Laguna Beach Women's Club. Our meeting hadn't started yet, and some of us were out on the street.

We invited her in, and 15 years later, she'd never had another dream. Isn't that powerful? Isn't that powerful? I almost cry when I think of that story. It's just an amazing thing that we and really a powerful thing we deal with here.

Anyway, I wasn't even alcoholic, like I say, when I was sent to the I wasn't. And in fact, I have no idea why going to AA yeah, originally, I wanted I was like, there are 2 kinds of people in AA. There are those who want the very minimum, the least they can get of this thing and still somehow get by. And there are people like you see in the legacy group where they want all they can get and more. You know, and and today I want all I can get of this thing.

I'm like the gal. I didn't hear her say it, but somebody told me that the gal had said that she used to drink for the fun of it. And she had so much fun drinking that she drank until drinking got to be a habit, and she continued to drink until she had to drink. In fact, it got so bad, she had to go to AA, and she went because she had to till it got to be a habit. Now she goes for the fun.

It's kind of that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, I remember when I first got sober, I remember calling Chuck C one night, and I said, they always said, tell us, stick with the winners, stick with the winners. I said, well, that's fine. What's the winner? And I called Chuck.

I says, what's a winner? And he had thought for a minute. He says, well, I guess you have to die sober. And I said, well, that's fine. You die sober, you get a winner.

I, and I used that for a while, but I got to thinking maybe it'd be better to just live sober. And then I got the idea that, I'd like to, be a successful member of AA. That was my goal, to be a successful member of AA, and over the years, my definition of success has varied a little bit, but essentially, I want to be a successful member of AA. More recently, I've been in the thing where I want to get, I don't know how much time I got left, but in whatever times, I'm sure there's a lot of time left, but whatever time there is, I want to, I want to get everything I can out of this program. I'm just trying to get everything I can out of this program.

It's so not there. I, I want it all. I want as much as I can get. And, I'm more into that category, but of all the things I've been to in AA, of all the variety of things, functions, and so on, I've never been to an AA function where they had a, occupational therapy booth, and I don't know why you'd have thought there'd have to be an occupational therapy booth, because I went back to that hospital, and I made the most beautiful pair of moccasins you've ever seen, pair of moccasins and a half a wallet. And I just love those moccasins.

They looked good. They felt good. They wore good. It took 7 years. They had tongues to break.

I'd repair them 7 years before those moccasins wore out to the point where I couldn't repair them anymore. And I felt bad. Not bad enough to go back, make another prayer. Now I guess Max was afraid that I might. And, so for my 7th AA birthday, my dear Eleanor and wife had my moccasins bronze.

And I love my bronze moccasins. I figured as long as I remember where they came from, I won't have to go back and make another pair. And I just love them even though they're not nearly as comfortable anymore. You'll be happy to know, You'll be happy to know that I just remembered what it was I was thinking of when I forgot what Ordinarily, it's your loss because I think of it on the way home, you know. I was thinking, I don't know how we're talking about duration and time, and time with Max.

Max, we're thinking of age in that. I was talking about how long I'd been sober and about the history of the thing being in the book, and people have been asking me how old I am. They want to know how old Max is, but they won't ask her. They say, how old is Paul? And I'll be 72 in November, And Max and I have been emotionally involved with each other since 4 years of age.

And we've been married 50 years since last December. You're applauding AA and Al Naugh. It's interesting to me that we can, the program can do that to the 2 of us because actually, she drove me to drink for years. It's amazing how, the change in both of us, especially her. In fact, what we have now, it's like, I saw Chuck sees, kind of like Elsa sees, when you have 2 people on the program and they're both growing, because if people on the program, if they're not both growing, they don't grow together.

They're gonna grow apart This way, this way. And even then, you grow in fits and starts, so you feel like you're apart a lot of the time, and you gotta hang in there until they catch up to you. And worse than that is if you're the one down here. But if you grow together, even in spite of the fits and starts, like Elsa says, it's like 2 railroad tracks separately, but together with all those meetings and all the program, holding you together. And that's a great way to go, a great way to go.

That's what I was thinking about. Also when I was sitting here, they were kidding me about autographing all, autographing all these cards about being famous and being a celebrity, all making me, what they're doing is BS and me is what they were doing. Just like just like Ted was up here when he's introducing me. It reminded me of I've always wanted to be famous. I've always wanted to be famous.

In fact, I don't like to travel. I just don't like to travel. Max likes to travel. I don't like to travel, but I always had visions that at the appropriate time, I would be willing to go to Sweden or Norway or wherever it is where the king gives out the Nobel Prize in medicine. Yeah.

I would I would have, I would have discovered a cure for cancer, high blood pressure, common cold. And then when I got over there and got the Nobel Prize in Medicine, I would make God famous by saying God did it. It. It was like the, like the, remember the movie Amadeus where all he wanted was for God to make him famous. He was willing to work hard.

He was a good musician. He was willing to do all that stuff, and God didn't make him famous. He made this jerky little Mozart famous. He drove Salisbury crazy. He tried to kill himself.

He was really ticked off at God. Well, I could I didn't identify with Mozart. I identified with Salieri, and because I too wanted God to see all that. All he had to do was tell me a few little scientific facts like the cause of cancer. I, but I should never know.

And give me the facts. I would publish it and be famous, and I would say that he did it. I was gonna make God famous, and all he had to do was make me famous first. I thought it was real it would be easy for him to do. And, I I I thought it was a real bargain, but he never bought it.

He not only didn't make me famous, he made me anonymous. The point was, as I said, I wasn't even alcoholic when I came here, and, I wasn't. And, I thought you got alcoholism by drinking, and that's not true. You don't get alcoholism from drinking, you get drunk from drinking. But you get alcoholism by associating with alcoholics.

It's a contagious disease. It's it's a virus, and it's a virus and it affects your brain, you know, goes in through your ears. You have to be careful what you listen to when you're around the house. So that's how they give it to you. You hear them say, well, they did something, and you say, see, I did something like that.

I felt like that when I did that. You suppose I might be an alcoholic? Boom. Just like that. You're an alcoholic.

You become an alcoholic in an instant. We're instant alcoholics, And the bad part about it is once you got it, you can't get rid of it. I, I thought I'd get rid of it by giving it to somebody else. I didn't want it, and that made it worse. The more I gave it away, the more I had it.

I'm a much, much, much worse alcoholic tonight than I was then. When I first became alcoholic, I was very mild, just a little bit. I'm hardly alcoholic at all. In fact, I I I was, I was allergic to alcohol. That's what in AA, they say allergy to the mind, That's what they say.

Allergy to mind, compulsion to mind. I didn't have that. I had mild allergy, but I didn't have any compulsion. When I wanted to drink, I took it. What would happen if you waited for a compulsion and it didn't show up?

Well, I didn't have an allergy. I had an allergy, and I had an allergy to alcohol, but I wasn't a drunkard. It wasn't a wine dog. It wasn't a lush. It certainly wasn't a Skid Row bum.

A whole lot of things I wasn't, that I was an alcohol allergy. I react peculiarly to the drug alcohol. I do weird, and alcohol affects me weirdly. Drinking alcohol makes me thirsty. Normal drinker, they feel thirsty.

They go drink. Hell, they might not even finish the dumb thing. Waste it. When I have a drink, it makes me thirsty. Every drink tastes like one more drink.

In fact, my last drink is way in the back of my brain. There's some place ready to tell me, come on. You you need another drink, and I know it's there. It's following me. I have a disease, and it's following me.

All I don't know is how far back it is. And, I could find out by going to meetings and wait till it got oh, I needed one more meeting in the when I got drunk. I'm not that curious. All I need to know I'm glad that it's there. I'm glad to know it'll always be there.

It'll always be suggesting that I need a drink. But it isn't a compulsion. I, but I react peculiar to alcohol when I drink it. It makes me I don't feel all that wonderful when I drink. Some people feel wonderful when they drink.

I didn't feel wonderful. I just every drink I took seemed like a good idea. Seemed like a good seemed like a good idea at the time. The, but I did react to it. I would, have a few drinks, and it would might relax me too much or something.

It would be like I was in my tongue. It affect my tongue. It might affect my tongue, and I would sign. I would have to talk slowly and and deliberately so nobody would notice. Or I would reach for something and knock it over, or I would trip when there was nothing to trip.

I might even find myself lying there looking very serene. And then get up, you fool. People will think you're drunk. And my mind would say, what do you mean get up? We're paralyzed from the ears down.

And isn't that strange that I can't move? I never heard of anybody that when they drank, they got pure paralyzed from the ears down. I must be I must have an idiosyncrasy to alcohol. I have an abnormal response to this medication. I have a peculiar response to this drug, this medicine, and I have an allergy.

I have to ask somebody about that sometime. I was thinking, I was in medical school at the time, back a little late, and I thought in medical school, I think, well, I'd ask some allergy professor or something, sometime, but I never found anybody to ask. You can't ask just anybody a question like that. They're very prone to say, well, I don't know, but it affects me that way. I just wouldn't drink it anymore.

I didn't ask anybody, but I could lie there on the floor and visually I'll be leafing through the pages to Goodman and Gilman's textbook of pharmacology under alcohol and blood levels and looking for paralysis from the ears down. I never found it. I never found it, but it was, it was good being a scientific bend. It it kept my mind on my paralysis and took my mind off my full bladder. And I no.

No. It really wasn't very funny. There's nothing funny about having a full bladder and a bladder, I mean, paralysis from years down and a bladder that's full and refuses to remain full. Very impractical. The bad part about that is that AA has not been any help to me on my limited bladder capacity.

I, I have to be very careful. I can't. AA coffee. I'm drinking water. AA coffee is as bad as beer was as far as blood.

You identify. Yeah. My bladder capacity, but I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining because even though my capacity is no better, my aim is a whole lot And I like that. I like that.

Max likes that too. I kept going to meetings and I turned into an alcoholic and, then I realized that in AA, they have 2 kinds of people in AA, those that are still drinking and those that aren't, and the ones that aren't drinking are the ones that seem to be having all the fun, and I thought I'd better be I'd like to be one of the non drinking kind. And so I started looking around to see who the winners were and how they were staying sober, and I decided I better not drink. And one of the things was that I accepted the fact that I was now fired. Before that, I had said that.

I admitted it. I admitted that I was now fired. They liked that in AA. You know, I sit here tonight, newcomers. They love that.

I said, you're an alcoholic, oh, you're the wonderful. Yeah. It really turns them on. So I did that. I said, My name's all.

I said, Oh, boy. They were real happy. Anything to please them, you know. I admitted I admitted it even though it wasn't true, but then I, when I accepted it, it made a difference, but I noticed that they don't have your drink. They don't they don't like for you to drink in AA.

They don't tell you that, but you can tell. You know what's that newcomers? They didn't say to you, don't you drink now. There's none of that, but boy, you can tell they don't like the drinking part of it. It's really a non drinking program.

So I figured I gotta quit drinking, but I was afraid to quit drinking because I've quit drinking many, many, many, many, many times. And every time, every time, every time I quit drinking, I ended up drunk. Here I am. I'm, drinking alcoholic. I can't quit because I'll get drunk, And, didn't know what to do and didn't want to ask anybody.

When you're a doctor, you don't ask people. And I heard some of the dumb things they said in AA. They said a lot of dumb things. I remember the time the guy said, if I drink today, I'm a success today. Oh, God.

What kind of an organization is this where he bragged about not having a lousy beer for God's sake. I, and then this thing that, Ted says, if you don't drink today, you won't get drunk today. Now any damn fool knows that. You know, and you might tell that to a Skid Row bum or something. You don't tell that to a doctor.

If you don't drink today, you won't get drunk today. Well, I don't know what else to do, so I thought, I just won't tell anybody. I won't say anything to anybody. I just won't drink today and see what happens. Nothing happened.

I decided to try another day. Nothing happened that day. I've been doing that for 22 years. That and a few other things. This is a very important day to me.

Today's the day I don't drink. I never drink on Saturdays. I drank many yesterday. I'm going to drink tomorrow, but I don't drink today. In fact, I don't think, I don't know for sure.

Maybe I couldn't even keep from drinking today if I didn't know I was going to drink tomorrow, but, when tomorrow gets here, I'll check the time, And if it's today, I won't drink today. And I haven't been drunk since the last time I quit drinking. So it's worked well for me. That and a few other things, having a sponsor. Somebody asked me who my sponsor was, a guy named Jack.

Jack, and he and I used to go to meetings together. He and his wife, Max and I, go to meetings together. And he was a month or 2 longer in the program than I was. And one night, the men's stag meeting was jumping on me because I didn't have sponsor when I was whining about something Max had done. And I was telling him about it.

So I said, what about you? Why don't you be my sponsor? And he said, well, I'll be your sponsor if you'll be my sponsor. So we've been sponsoring each other ever since. Short time later, he had a one night testing to see if they were making alcohol different than they were.

I love the research workers in the area. God bless them. And don't ever just, we need them. We need the research. And he found out it didn't work, so he came back.

So now I'm a couple of months ahead of him, but we sponsor each other. So we call each other twice as often. He's a great guy. Great guy. He's a great guy, except he has this real dumb expression, real dumb expression.

No matter what your problem is, no matter what you're complaining about, he says, well, whatever. What am I supposed to do with, well, whatever? You know? When he's describing his problems and all the trouble he's going through, and he can end up saying, well, whatever. I said, Max, boy, doesn't Jack work a wonderful program, didn't you?

It's, I've told the story many times, but I used to think that I would have done much more with my life if things had been different. Circumstances screwed it up, and my life would have been so much different if it had been more. My father hadn't been in the Alliance Ohio, been in a big town like Fort Worth, and he hadn't been a doctor instead of a drug. And Max had been more cooperative. We hadn't adopted those 2 girls, especially if Max would act different.

You know? And I used to and somebody ought to know. Somebody ought to know what it's like to live with Max so so that they understand why I haven't done more with my life than I have. And I would call him up. Somebody ought to know.

And I would call him was like living with Max. And I called him up one time when she had done something really horrendous that I can't recall at the moment. And I hardly even got started in telling him what things she had done, and he interrupted me. He interrupted me. He says, why don't you put it out of your mind for a couple of days and see what happens?

I said, couple of days, I'll forget all about it. And that's the big problem with problems. That's the problem with problems. Problems have a very high instant mortality. You can't neglect problems for any length of time at all because they just wither and die.

That's why it's such a dangerous thing to have somebody call you on the phone when you're right in the midst of working on a problem. Yeah. Well, wait. I I'll talk to you soon as I'm right down where I am in this problem. I don't wanna I don't wanna lose my place, you know, because I get on to the phone, and by the time I get back, the problem has withered and died.

And I, you can't neglect problems. You've gotta stay right with them. I don't even have to work on a problem to watch it grow. I just have to think about it. I can take any little problem, and it puts, waters it, fertilizes it, it, allows it to destroy.

I take any little problem and just think about it a little bit. Back then, take a non problem. Hell, that's no problem. I suppose if you think I'm thinking, my god. This is kind of interesting.

Every time I think, my god. It's a good thing I'm looking at this. Everybody else is missing it. You know? And this gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

People can't even help you much with a problem like that. They tell you dumb things. Well, don't think about it. How are you gonna not think about something you're obsessed with? You know?

I don't even bother with problems unless they're worth getting obsessed with. Like resentments. I don't bother with any but the justifiable ones. And I always love to tell you why it's justifiable. And, but I, it might in fact, my sponsor says to me, Paul says, don't drink and don't think.

All my problems today are thinking problems. I don't even have a problem today unless I think I do. And conversely, I've never ever thought I had a problem and been wrong. I think I got a problem, I got a problem. And no matter what choosing, if I think I got a big problem, it's a big problem.

If I think it's a little problem, it's a little problem. And if I don't think I have a problem, I don't have a problem no matter what anybody else thinks. I determine whether or not I have a problem and the size of my problems. And, I I I just love my problems. They'll come from my thinking.

I, and I I have in the talking, and I don't know how you think, but I think with somebody talking to me, somebody in my head is talking to me. In fact, a lot of times people think I'm not listening to them, and I am, but I'm also listening to the voice in my head that's telling me what to say as soon as you stop talking. And and sometimes there's more than 1. They're arguing with me as to what I and they they even get the fighting among themselves as to what they're gonna talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And if I do get to drinking a lot of coffee, get a lot of caffeine, they really get wired up and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

After the minute, I go home, I wanna go lie down with my body, wants to go to sleep, my brain says, no, let's lay here and talk about it a while. I, in fact, a lot of times, I'll get to sleep in a 2:30, 3, 3 o'clock in the morning. They'll hey. Hey. Wake up.

We've got we've got a meeting. This is an emergency. We need to talk to you. You know that thing that went on today that you thought went so well and they're so happy with you about? Wasn't like that at all.

They're really ticked off at you. Wait till morning, you'll find out. I don't wanna listen to that crap. I'll roll over and go back to sleep. And just as I'm about to lose consciousness, I think to myself, boy, I'm glad I'm not thinking about that anymore.

And I say, hey, you know, you know, that's not the only time you did that. You about 6 months ago, you did. As a matter of fact, you've done a lot of let's spend the rest of the night making lists of dumb things that you've done, you know. You you don't wanna write your 4th? My God, we'll write it tonight.